Accelerometers have traditionally been used to detect and analyze vehicle impacts for purposes of determining if, when, and how forcefully to deploy supplemental restraints such as air bags. Various alternative impact sensing strategies have been proposed, particularly for side impact sensing. See, for example, the U.S. Pat. No. 5,748,075 to Dirmeyer et al. where a pressure sensor is used to detect a sudden rise in pressure within an enclosed hollow body such as side door; and the U.S. Pat. No. 3,654,412 to Haruna et al. where a plunger-type sensor is used to detect deformation of a body panel. However, the alternative sensing approaches that are capable of very early impact detection also tend to produce crash-like signals during non-crash events such as when the vehicle door or bumper is struck by a hammer or bicycle, for example. And the alternative sensing approaches that are capable of reliably discriminating a crash event usually result in no earlier crash event detection than traditional sensing approaches. Accordingly, what is desired is a crash sensing strategy and apparatus for detecting vehicle impacts both quickly and reliably.